The False Equivalence of Multicultural Day

I attended public schools in New York City from K-12. Throughout this time, I was never exposed to any conservatism. Liberalism was presumed to be the status quo for every facet of education. I never learned that there was another side to the abortion issue. We were never taught to be proud of our nation. And to the extent we learned anything about American history, the focus was always on the negatives. I couldn’t tell you what the Declaration of Independence declared beyond its opening paragraph, but I surely knew its signatories were hypocrites because they owned slaves. Moreover, we were taught nothing that would give us pride in the state of New York. I didn’t learn till much later in life that major battles from the Revolutionary War were fought only a few miles from my home. I certainly learned how colonialists cheated Indian tribes out of their land. Fast forward two centuries, and immigrants were poorly treated upon their arrival at Ellis Island. But there was little that celebrated the Empire State, which, against all odds, became the crossroads of the world. It is little wonder that byproducts of the public school system elected a Democratic Socialist as mayor.

After I graduated from college, I had no interest in returning to New York. Fate brought me to Texas, where I have found a home to raise my family. I now have two young children in public school in a Houston suburb. Thankfully, our district has a conservative school board that favors education over ideology. Under the state-approved curriculum, students are given a balanced approach to history. Equally important, students are taught to have pride in America and in Texas. Every day begins with students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas flag. “Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.” How many students in New York could even tell you what the state flag looks like?

Still, even in this conservative enclave, there are incursions of liberalism. I speak, of course, about Multicultural Day. On paper, the program seems unobjectionable. Students are asked to wear clothes from their ancestral homeland. Students can also prepare posters with pictures and other symbols from that nation. And parents can bring in food from their local cuisines. Students then group together by region: Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. They parade down the hallway, which was festooned with flags from around the globe. At some level, the day was enjoyable. I saw kids smiling as they celebrated the culture that mattered most to them. Parents also cheered when their home country was represented. What could be wrong?

The gathering reminded me of the United Nations General Assembly, where every nation from around the world assembles, each with an equal stature and say in all matters. (As a New Yorker public schooler, we were taught that the United Nations was a legitimate international governing body, even if ambassador “scofflaws” double-parked on the East Side.) But of course, Multicultural Day, like the General Assembly, is something of a fiction. By any objective measure, not all countries are worth celebrating equally by everyone. I can make this statement as a matter of present-day realpolitik or as a matter of historical conflicts. 

Consider a few obvious examples. One student waving a Russian flag stood next to a student waving a Ukrainian flag. They were grouped together because those countries bordered each other. Isn’t that the problem? How would a student with ancestors from Taiwan or Tibet feel about the large contingency of Chinese students? How should students from India and Pakistan interact? Students waved flags from Syria, a country that has slaughtered so many of its own people. What about an Iranian flag, a country America recently bombed? Moreover, the sins of these other nations are not taught; only their positive aspects are. Such negative attention is reserved for the United States. It is no surprise, then, that the youth are inculcated at the earliest age to see the United States as a flawed nation that is inferior to other nations with far more checkered pasts. I firmly believe that parents have an affirmative obligation to reinforce patriotic values and counter the narratives that are taught in school. The belief in American exceptionalism requires the belief that America is exceptional.

Let’s make this personal. Our family brought a poster about Israel. We were very careful to avoid anything that could be considered controversial, recognizing how volatile this issue was. We included photographs of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock, the beach in Tel Aviv, the Dead Sea, and other popular sites. On the other side of the room was a poster for “Palestine” (scare quotes are intentional). The parents who brought that poster made no effort to avoid controversy. I kid you not, there was a bust of Yasser Arafat, a terrorist who is responsible for the death of American citizens. They brought a doll wearing a kaffiyeh, a symbol of Hamas terrorists who murdered American citizens on October 7, 2023. They displayed a children’s book that explained how Israel stole the land of a boy’s grandfather. There was a map of Palestine that made no reference to Israel. From the river to the sea, as they say. The express goal was to teach impressionable students about a volatile issue with a one-sided, and perhaps libelous, presentation.

Under the guise of multiculturalism, every representation of culture must be accepted on its own terms as an equal partner in the global community of prosperity. But attempts to be neutral and “inclusive” don’t work in the real world. Where would the Jewish people go on that map? Presumably, they would be pushed into the river or the sea. How should a Jewish student view a celebration of Yasser Arafat? Maybe they could have included a bobblehead of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The asymmetry continued. The school purchased a set of flag stamps on Amazon so students could get their play passports stamped. Wouldn’t you know that the set had a Palestine stamp, but not an Israel stamp? Fortunately, we brought stickers of the Israeli flag, so students could have their passports completed. I don’t think this omission was deliberate on the school’s part. But the kind of people who create multicultural stamp sets are the kind of people who would not recognize the legality of Israel. Jews simply do not fit into the DEI intersectionality pyramid: we cannot be oppressed because we are oppressors.

You can learn a lot about what society values by reviewing a calendar. Schools purport to celebrate all races, religions, and nationalities, but only certain holidays are celebrated. There are “months” dedicated to African Americans and women, but all other groups don’t even get a day. Even then, once those fleeting moments are over, everything goes back to reality. These performances are less about cultural recognition and more about performative virtue signaling. 

I see a deeper problem. For some students, both of their parents trace their roots to the same country. In that case, it should be straightforward for the student to dress and decide which poster to bring. But I would wager that most students trace their roots to different cultures. Ideally, children would be encouraged to bring posters that reflect several of their own cultures. But I counted very few such multicultural displays. Invariably, one parent chose which culture would be represented, at the expense of the other parent’s heritage. You can guess which heritages were favored. As a result, attire was limited to a single country. Attempts to teach multiculturalism required picking a preferred culture.

There’s more. For the parade, students were assigned to a specific region. Where should Jewish children fit in that line? As we are often reminded, Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity. None of my ancestors lived in Israel — at least not in the modern era — though I have many cousins who live there now. Israel fits neatly on no continent. My kids marched in an arbitrary spot of the parade with another Jewish student. And what of Native Texans? Yes, that is a thing. Children can request a “Natural Born Texan” birth certificate. Many Texas families have been in this state and, before that, in the Republic, for centuries. To the extent they have connections to a foreign land, those connections are attenuated. But could a student reflect Texan culture on multicultural day? I saw no Texas flags. Students favored ancient ties over modern-day communities. One creative student paid homage to American culture with an Uncle Sam hat. Represent.

Multicultural Day is a gateway drug to DEI. It acculturates students at the earliest age to focus on differences between races and nationalities rather than on what unites us. Efforts to allow students to represent their own cultures necessarily separate them on that very basis. Shortly after Multicultural Day ended, African American History Month began. Unsurprisingly, there was no representation of Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most influential black people in American history.

‍Josh Blackman holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law at the South Texas College of Law Houston, is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook, and is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.